CLASSIC: It is an honor I dream not of.

Since, as we all know, my motto is and has always been “Safety First” – followed closely by “Dignity, Always Dignity” – we’re going to return today to our occasional series of seminars on drastic and dangerous life events.

This week’s topic is “how to survive going to two weddings in one day.”

– Firstly and most importantly – this really cannot be stressed enough – do not wait until the day you are attending two weddings to buy the shoes you are planning on wearing to two weddings. For while your brand-new shoes may be very impressive in their own right, and when combined with your brand-new suit and shirt and tie, all selected and coordinated specifically for the two-wedding day, make you resemble nothing so much as the reincarnation of Burt Lancaster himself, and we’re talking like vintage 1955 “I just got finished sleeping with Ava Gardner AND Lana Turner and, my oh my, what’s your name, sweetheart?” Burt Lancaster, wearing brand-new shoes to two weddings in one day is a CATASTROPHICALLY BAD IDEA. Doing so will cause your resemblance to Burt Lancaster to rapidly erode, as it is a known fact that Burt Lancaster was in possession of both his feet, and after a couple hours of wearing brand-new wingtips the only thought in your entire head – overriding your base, lizard-brain lusting after food, sex, lower taxes and oxygen – will be a burning desire to chop off your own feet with a rusty axe.

– Have backup. This is valuable in several respects. If, for instance, you tear the price tag off your brand-new tie a little too vigorously and rip out one of the moorings of the little tie-holder-label-thingy, while driving to the first wedding you can call your backup and say, “you got any safety pins? What do you mean you threw out all your safety pins? How the fuck can you throw away anything as fantastically useful as safety pins? Fabric glue? Will that set in time? Okay, fine, bring that.” (This is an actual, complete quote.) Or, when partway through the first of two weddings in one day, you can say to your father, “if you don’t get me a pair of golf shoes that look like wingtips I’m going to chop my feet off with a rusty axe.” If your backup gets snippy, you can remind them that pain overrides family and that once you start chopping off body parts it can be very hard to stop. You know, like Jedi.

– While buying nice new Burt Lancaster-izing clothing for two weddings in one day is endorsed, if you are buying your clothing at someplace you have never shopped before be sure that you actually look at the prices of the clothes you’re buying, so you can avoid situations such as tearing the price tag off your brand-new tie a little too vigorously and, while wondering how you’re going to fix the little tie-holder-label-thingy, glancing at the too-vigorously-removed price tag and realizing that you have paid more for a tie than you normally do for a shirt, and that you normally pay pretty handsomely for shirts to begin with. This realization is closely followed by a feeling of growing horror while you try to calculate how much you paid for the new shirt from this place, then wondering whether the guy at the gas station on the way to work on Monday morning will accept the change from your cup holders as payment.

– While the bucolic location for the first reception might make you think that everyone will be very relaxed and easygoing, always remember to be very, very careful when surrounded by large groups of Germans. This advice applies pretty much anywhere, really. And for god’s sake, whatever you do, don’t mention the war.

– Your desire to end the lives of certain guests at the reception is not something you should verbalize.

– At the first reception, if your father has been hopelessly addicted to the bride’s grandmother’s pastries for the last 40 years, telling your father that the dessert tray is a collection of pastries made by the bride’s grandmother and that they are out and ready to be eaten is a surefire way to guarantee that you do not get to eat any of said pastries.

– Silk suspenders do not have the same kind of “give” in them as the cheaper, elastic suspenders you may have worn in the past. This means that things like going to the bathroom take exponentially longer as you will spend several minutes trying, Houdini-like, to extricate yourself from them, since after you realize that you could have made a car payment for what you inadvertently paid for said silk suspenders you will find breaking your own back preferable to doing any damage to the goddamn things.

– Wearing contact lenses for the first time in almost a year is recommended if the first reception is outside on a beautiful sunny day, as it makes the wearing of sunglasses possible. Trying to drive from one reception to another in the dusk of twilight while wearing contact lenses for the first time in almost a year is not recommended, as the combination of your eyes adjusting to your slightly-different vision and the tricky, shifting light of the immediate post-sunset period will make driving in under-lit suburbs much more exciting than it really needs to be.

– When arriving at your friend’s parents’ house for the second reception, do not trip over the SAME GODDAMN TRICK DOORSTEP THAT YOU HAVE TRIPPED OVER EVERY ONE OF THE HUNDREDS OF TIMES YOU’VE GONE INTO THAT HOUSE FOR THE LAST TWENTY FUCKING YEARS! Seriously, don’t do that.

– No matter how much your new clothing makes you resemble Burt Lancaster, the sentence, “you look so much like my ex-girlfriend that I really thought you were her, but when you walked past and didn’t punch me in the face I realized you weren’t” is not the first thing you want to say to someone you’ve just met. The fact that it is 100% literally true does not matter. Even at a nighttime, outdoor reception, where the darkness makes you resemble Burt Lancaster that much more, saying things like this clearly marks you as “not relationship material.”

– Get your friend who lives out of town and is thus marrying a woman you haven’t met yet to introduce you to his new wife BEFORE he is drunk.

– If you once watched one of your friends drink 26 beers in one night, offer him a ride home BEFORE people start playing beer pong if you want to leave the party any time soon.

– And, finally – whether your belief tends toward Jehovah, Vishnu or the Lords of Kobol, never let anyone think that you don’t thank the powers that be every day that you have the friends you have, without whom none of these fun things are possible. (Or necessary.)